Stranded
in Ladakh:
Land of High Passes
By Benjamin Weiss
School of International & Public Affairs
Photos: Benjamin Weiss

“THROUGH Ladakh, I have

come to see everything differently.”
With those words, a zealous French
tourist named François nudged
Andrew Harvey, the author and
religious scholar, to trek to one of
India’s remotest regions. “You must
go to Ladakh,” said the Frenchman,
prodding further. “It will change your
life as it has changed mine.”
I first read François’ plea, which opens
Harvey’s classic travelogue, “A Journey
in Ladakh,” during a holiday in Leh,
Ladakh’s capital city. Little did I know
at the time, Ladakh would soon change
my own life, and I, too, would come to
see everything differently.
Ladakh, “the land of high passes,” sits in
the eastern portion of the Indian state
of Jammu and Kashmir. Nestled high
in the Himalayas on the periphery of
the subcontinent, the area is known for
its centuries-old Buddhist monasteries,
or gompas, and breathtaking mountain
scenery. “When we think of Ladakh,”
the travel writer Pico Iyer has written,
“the high, dry region in northern India
that borders Tibet and is often called
‘the world’s last Shangri-La,’ we nearly
always see in our mind’s eye one of
the planet’s last centers of Himalayan
[4]

A monk at Thikse Gompa in Ladakh, peering out over the Indus Valley

Buddhism, whose people still live in
sturdy whitewashed houses, amidst
fields of barley and wheat irrigated by
glacial snowmelt, as they might have
done several centuries ago.”
It was late July 2010 when I first
ventured to Ladakh. I had been living
and working in New Delhi and was

desperate to flee the summer swelter.
Drenched in sweat, running my fingers
across a map of India in search of an
escape route, I recalled Iyer’s essay —
and, without hesitating, made my way
north to the mountains.
Like many travelers to the region,
I set up a base in Leh. For the next

Spring 2014 | APAC Journal

eight days, I strolled through the
narrow, dusty alleyways of the old
city, visited the picturesque gompas
clinging impossibly to the cliffs
at Alchi, Thikse and Lamayuru,
sipped saffron-scented Kashmiri
tea and nibbled on fresh apricots,
peered across the sandy shores
of Pangong Lake into bordering
Tibet, and gazed at the millions of
twinkling stars that peppered the
evening sky.

Cloudbursts Strike Leh
On my eighth night in Leh, I awoke
shortly after midnight to the sound
of hail and sheets of rain clattering
against my window. Lightning crashed
and flickered, illuminating the night
sky like flashbulbs along a Hollywood
red carpet. Trees contorted in the
heavy wind.
The next morning brought shocking
news of cloudbursts causing flash
floods. “Many people missing,” we
were told by a 72-year old Ladakhi
man who had just returned from the
city center, his English broken and his
gaze pained. “Fifty people dead. Threestory-building come down.”

Shanti Stupa in Leh, built to promote world peace and prosperity

As I hurried toward Leh’s old city
to get a better look, a mule galloped
by, caked from head to hoof in
stinky mud. Shredded Tibetan
prayer flags lay strewn across the
road, their typically vibrant colors
faded and bland. Weary foreign
travelers walked past, headed
for higher ground with cases of
bottled water and cans of instant
soup. I hopped over a few puddles
and followed the road as it
descended into the center of the city

— or at least to what remained of it.
To my left, a giant mud hill towered
over what was once one of Leh’s
busiest streets. Pipes poked through
the soil. Directly ahead, a massive
Tibetan prayer wheel, filthy and sawed
in half by a truck that had floated
down in the night. A day earlier,
there had been homes and schools and
shops on that road. Now there was
debris and dirt and destruction.
Yesterday there had been life; today,
only death.
[5]

APAC Journal | Spring 2014

Ladakhis and foreigners stood shoulder
to shoulder in a dozen lines, shoveling
mud, rubble and sopping garments
into buckets in a frantic search for
buried victims. I swung my camera
around my back and jumped into a
queue. Through my bare hands passed
bowls and pots of dirt, crumbling
bricks, shards of wood. A dank, putrid
odor filled the air.

The region is geographically
peripheral, to be sure, but
strategically central. With so
many resources nearby, was
it unreasonable to expect
some semblance of a relief
effort?
Many of Leh’s older homes were built
with mud bricks. When the rushing
waters and debris came down from the
hills, the mud simply melted, engulfing
men, women and children as they slept.
A bulldozer flipped over the mangled
skeleton of a jeep. An elderly woman to
my right chanted a Buddhist mantra to
give her the strength to lift the heavy
loads. A pair of glasses surfaced in a
bucket of dirt. A muddied and cracked
family photo made the rounds. All
grim reminders: We were looking for
bodies. Me. The Indian couple from my
guesthouse. The maroon-robed monk
from a nearby monastery. The young
woman from Israel. The innocent child
from Leh.
But, strangely, no police. No military.
No government relief crews. A small
handful of uniformed men stood with
hands on their hips. Two or three were
sprinkled in with the civilians passing
buckets of dirt. A bunch sat on a
nearby hillside snapping photos with
their cell phones. A local politician
came for a quick photo op and was off,
as suddenly as he (and his motorcade)
arrived.
[6]

Destruction and crude relief efforts in Leh’s old city in the flood’s aftermath

Disaster Response in India
The scene repeated itself for days:
Ladakhis and tourists arranged in
rows, passing buckets of dank mud
and debris, buckets of demolished lives.
Corpses roasted in the summer sun,
breeding fears of disease. Hundreds
were said to be missing in Leh and
nearby villages. ATMs ran out of cash.
Shops ran low on food. Electricity was
scarce. And all the while, an official
response seemed all but absent.
What could have been expected in
such an inaccessible region? Despite
its remoteness, Ladakh is of immense

strategic importance to India. Military
facilities and airstrips in and around
Leh serve as a staging ground for any
potential conflicts with nearby China
and Pakistan, as well as for security
operations in restive Kashmir. The
region is geographically peripheral,
to be sure, but strategically central.
With so many resources nearby,
was it unreasonable to expect some
semblance of a relief effort?
I wrote angrily at the time of the
dangerous and chaotic atmosphere,
and the lack of any visible authority:
of clearing debris from a clinic at
a government official’s request,

Spring 2014 | APAC Journal

only to find in each bucket of mud
used syringes and potentially toxic
medical waste; of learning that live
ammunition from a nearby base had
floated into that very clinic and could
be set off at a moment’s notice; of
the price-gauging tourist operators
that tacked on hundreds of dollars in
fees to tickets on the few commercial
flights out of Leh; of the government
officials promising scores of emergency
shuttles out of the city, which never
seemed to materialize; of the “massive
relief effort” supposedly launched that
seemed to lack both mass and effort, or
anything close to relief; of the countless
soldiers and police officers from nearby
bases bribing airport ticket agents and
boarding the only evacuation planes
departing the troubled city, leaving
Ladakhis and stranded tourists to fend
for themselves; of “scheduled” and
“imminent” cargo flights with capacity
to evacuate people, which turned out
not to exist; and of days later, finally
boarding an “oversold” emergency
flight out of Leh, only to find it full
of empty seats, unused as we lifted off
for Delhi in plain view of hundreds
standing helplessly and hopelessly

on the ground below, desperate for
an escape.

An Epi l ogue on Traged y
“Ineptitude is frustrating,” I scrawled
in my journal. “When it results in
death, it is infuriating.”
I wrote about the incompetence of
local authorities, the military and the
government; about the countless lies
pedaled in the city, at the airport and by
the national leadership in Delhi; about
the bogus death tolls, the bogus flights,
the bogus news coverage, the grossly
low estimates of stranded people;
about whether anyone would be held
to account; about the uniqueness (or
lack thereof ) of these problems; about
whether or not supply roads would be
rebuilt before the harsh winter isolated
the city; about whether glorious Leh
— that historical, religious and natural
gem of a city — could move beyond
such devastating tragedy; and about
who, if anyone, would help.
Four years on, I cannot say I have found
answers to many of those questions.

Time and reflection have tempered
some of the anger; at 11,000 feet and
with a desert climate, the flash floods
in Ladakh caught everyone by surprise.
Perspective has convinced me that my
expectations may have been too high;
whether in Port-Au-Prince or the
Philippines, New Orleans, New York
City or the northern periphery of the
Indian subcontinent, natural disasters
everywhere breed fear and disorder,
rumor and confusion. Experience has
counseled a tad more patience than
I may have been capable of showing
during those trying days in the summer
of 2010. With the only two roads to
Leh destroyed, hospitals collapsed,
sections of the airport flooded and
telecommunications
infrastructure
washed away, the slow arrival of relief
may have had more to do with the
immensely challenging circumstances
than I initially let on.
Yet the difficult questions remain, so I
turn, once again, to François’ prophetic
words: “Through Ladakh, I have come
to see everything differently... It will
change your life as it has changed
mine.” That much is certain.

Thikse Gompa, spared permanent damage by the floods, is the largest monastery in Ladakh and lies only 12 miles from Leh

[7]

APAC Journal | Spring 2014
08

Feature: North Korea

Life on the Margins:
A Defector’s Story
By Josh Philip Ross

Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Photo: Park Ji-woo

PARK Ji-woo was born in 1989

in Hoeryeong, North Korea, a town
famous for being the birthplace of
Kim Jong-il’s mother. Park, whose
name has been changed to protect her
identity, is now a South Korean citizen
with a degree in political science from
Yonsei University. In her young life,
she has endured frostbite and hunger,
made five illegal border crossings, been
bought and sold as a farm laborer, been
arrested three times and detained in
four countries, survived three separate
stints in North Korean labor camps,
fallen into debt to human traffickers
and walked across the Mongolian
desert to freedom. She has also gone
to school, made friends, learned three
languages and traveled to Europe and
America.
Park’s story is her own, but it
exemplifies the ways in which North
Korea’s people — particularly those
who leave in search of a better life —
exist at the margins of the societies in
which they find themselves.
Park left North Korea when she was
only nine years old. She fled with her
mother after enduring years of famine,
sometimes surviving on only one meal
a day of cornmeal porridge. In China,
[8]

for protection, Park’s mother sold
herself through a broker for 20,000
yuan to become the wife of a farmer.
She and her mother were forced to do
hard labor on the farm under constant
supervision by the family that had
purchased them, and Park was not
allowed to attend school. Despite this,
she has fond memories of the farmer’s
son, three years her junior, who taught
her to speak and read Chinese.

school and live the normal life of a
rural Chinese student. Over the next
several years, however, Park and her
mother were twice arrested by Chinese
authorities, deported to North Korea
and again sent to labor camps. Both
times they were able to purchase
their freedom for about 100 yuan, or
around $15.

After 13 months, Park and her mother
were arrested, sent back to North
Korea and imprisoned, surviving on
roughly 120 corn kernels a day —
fewer than 80 calories — and enduring
constant thirst. Beatings in prison were
common, though Park never received
one. Following their imprisonment,
she and her mother were transferred to
a labor camp. Conditions were harsh,
but Park says that if you had money,
the guards would sell you food at night.

By 2006, Park’s mother had decided
they should escape to South Korea
by way of Mongolia. Park was
apprehensive, but she was lured by the
promise of a college education. They
paid a broker 1 million South Korean
won up-front, with an additional
3 million won owed when they
arrived in Seoul ($1,200 and $3,600,
respectively). They traveled from
Qingdao by train, bus and car for five
days, careful to avoid the police, and
at last arrived in Inner Mongolia on
China’s northern periphery.

After a couple of months, Park and her
mother were freed in an amnesty. They
visited their hometown, where Park’s
father had remarried, and soon made
their way back to China. Park’s mother
was sold into a second and then a
third marriage, which provided them
enough stability that Park could attend

Escape Through Mongolia

After waiting in a safe house, they
set out at night into the frozen
desert. Their guide left them at this
point, telling them to walk west into
Mongolia proper. That was all they
knew. After a harrowing 14 hours,

Spring 2014 | APAC Journal

they caught sight of two Mongolian
soldiers on horseback. To Park they
looked like fairytale princes. They put
her on one of the horses — she had
never ridden one before — and carried
her back to their encampment. For
the first time in her life, Park and her
mother were now beyond the reach of
the North Korean government.

Resettlement in South Korea
Mongolia does not repatriate North
Korean defectors (NKDs), but lets
them choose among Japan, the
United States or South Korea for
resettlement. After six weeks of
administrative processing, Park and
her mother were sent to Seoul, where
they were questioned by intelligence
officials before being sent to Hanawon,
a mandatory reeducation and job
training program for North Korean
defectors. Park studied hard there,
where she also met many Protestant
Christians, preferring them to
Buddhists and Catholics because they
offered more food and seemed friendly.
After Hanawon, Park’s mother
received resettlement funds, which she
used to pay off her debt to the human
traffickers. Park’s mother eventually
brought her third Chinese husband
to join her, and recently Park’s sister
was able to escape North Korea and
join them as well. But they still feel
like outsiders, lacking the common
cultural bonds of most South Koreans.
Park’s best friend and her ex-boyfriend
are both NKDs, and Park’s mother
has started a business selling kimbap
(a Korean dish resembling sushi) with
five other North Korean women. In
South Korea, NKDs tend to be poor
and often mistrusted. They are not
quite a minority community, but they
are not fully South Korean either.
A continuing problem for North
Koreans, no matter what country they

may reside in, is the lack of civil society
institutions to promote and safeguard
their interests. In North Korea, a
totalitarian government forbids any
independent institutions. In China,
defectors are illegal aliens, unable
to form coherent communities or
public organizations. In South Korea,
however, the obstacles are more subtle:
Defectors often face discrimination,
and in some cases their families suffer
retaliation in North Korea, forcing
many like Park to keep their identities
secret. Furthermore, South Korea is
anything but neutral ground in the
conflict with North Korea, and its
politics and laws limit the scope of
discussion about North Korea’s future.
The plight of NKDs is a moral and
practical challenge not only for North
Korea, but also for China and South
Korea. North Korea seeks to keep its
citizens from escaping into China, but
also punishes them when they return
because their back-and-forth travel
and trade is disruptive of the regime’s
attempts at isolation and information
control. China is faced with two
equally unpalatable choices: It must
either absorb a floating population
into its underdeveloped northeast,
where defectors’ illegal status breeds
organized crime and enslavement, or
return these refugees to North Korea
and risk international condemnation.
South Korea has a moral and legal
obligation to accept any refugees who
make their way to third countries, but
has found absorbing and integrating
these refugees a cultural and political
challenge.
Perhaps Mongolia offers a solution.
So far, the country has been quick to
relocate the North Korean defectors
who arrive there, but what if it granted
them residence instead? Mongolia
has good relations with both Koreas,
considerable trade with South Korea
and a rapidly growing economy

that could absorb a migrant labor
force. Defectors could live outside
both Koreas while interacting with
Mongolia’s population of South
Korean expatriates and tourists.
Mongolia could be encouraged to
facilitate such a program in exchange
for funds it desperately needs to
develop
critical
infrastructure,
particularly for the mining of rare
earths used in electronics.
Mongolia could become a neutral
space for North Koreans to argue
among themselves about the future of
their own country and culture, perhaps
giving a marginalized group of
defectors the political agency necessary
to effect change back at home. When
and if the two Koreas unify, the
benefits of a North Korean civil society
beyond Pyongyang’s control could
be invaluable in easing the transition.

Life O ut sid e t he M argi n s
I met Park last year when she was
studying English at Baruch College
and enjoying opportunities that
are unimaginable for most of her
compatriots. Living in the United
States gave her a sense of freedom
and inclusion that she does not always
feel in South Korea. Here, she was
just another immigrant in a society of
immigrants. The broad contours of her
story, however — including famine
and deprivation, border crossings, an
unstable life in China with no legal
protections, harsh punishment upon
repatriation and difficulties adjusting
to life in South Korea — mirror the
experiences of many other NKDs who
cannot share her sense of freedom.
Park’s journey spanned multiple state
and cultural peripheries, and unless
a long-term solution is found, many
other NKDs may be destined to live
on the margins without the political
status needed to thrive as both citizens
and Koreans.
[9]

APAC Journal | Spring 2014

Interview: China

Credit: Andrey Salikov / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

10

China’s Periphery
& Tibet’s Future
An Interview with
Robert Barnett
By Reece Garrett Johnson
School of International & Public Affairs

ROBERT Barnett founded and

directs the Modern Tibetan Studies
Program at Columbia University, the
first Western teaching program in this
field. He is a frequent commentator on
Tibet and nationality issues in China
for the BBC, CNN, NPR, The New
York Times, the Washington Post and
other media outlets. His most recent
books are “Tibetan Modernities:
Notes from the Field,” with Ronald
Schwartz; and “Lhasa: Streets with
Memories.” Professor Barnett agreed
to talk about Tibet and its future
from the perspectives of “core” and
“periphery,” two concepts that often
shape discussions about culture,
politics and identity.

How are core and periphery
understood inside China, and
is it a perspective you favor
when it comes to evaluating
China’s relationship with Tibet?
Chinese foreign policy analysts
tend to treat the periphery
as of critical importance. In one
recent article, two leading analysts in
Shanghai described periphery policy as
“the core of China’s external strategy,”
and they wrote that the most serious
challenge to the People’s Republic of
China (PRC) in its initial years came
RB

[10]

from the periphery. So concern about
the border areas may be much more
important to Chinese policymakers
than we might expect.
They were probably referring to
the 20 neighboring countries that
border China, but that is just its
outer periphery. It also has an inner
periphery — the areas within the PRC
that touch its outer borders but are
within it — and for security people
within China, it is the interaction
between these two spheres that is
particularly important. They are
acutely concerned, for example, about
support Tibetans in Tibet might be
receiving from Tibetans in India or
Nepal, interaction between Uighurs in
Xinjiang and those in Central Asia, or
perhaps even political influence among
the Dai people in Yunnan from related
groups in Southeast Asia.
One of the principal issues for the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in
the 1940s was the fear that Mongolians
in Mongolia might promote an
independence movement in Inner
Mongolia. Since then, China has tried
to prevent those nations just outside
its borders from seeding any such
problems within its territory. It has
done this primarily through generosity
— offering to assist those neighbors

through trade, aid packages, diplomatic
prestige and so on. On the surface
it’s somewhat similar to the frequent
promises of economic development
and advancement made by Beijing
to the peoples in its inner periphery,
except that there it uses force as well.
The gift-giving approach characterized
China’s initial relations in the postSoviet era with the Central Asian
republics, now grouped together as the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
But in fact that pact started as a
Chinese effort to stop those nations
from giving support to any dissident
Uighurs who had fled from China
— possibly a recollection of the time
when 60,000 Kazakhs and Uighurs
escaped from China to the Soviet
Union in the 1960s. So this is an
example of the sealing up of a nation’s
borders to prevent the wrong people
from leaving the country, as well as to
stop the wrong people entering.
It’s this that seems to have been
behind the massacre in Kunming this
March, reportedly an act of revenge by
a group of Uighurs who had tried to
leave China by its southern borders but
found that exit route blocked to them,
just as with the northern borders. A
similar incident, which led to seven
deaths, took place in mid-April on

Spring 2014 | APAC Journal

China’s border with Vietnam. Most
of Tibet today is also sealed off: Since
a group of Tibetans traveled to India
in late 2011 to attend teachings by the
Dalai Lama, it seems that no Tibetans
from the Tibet Autonomous Region
(TAR) have been allowed to get a
passport or travel abroad unless they
are officials.
As for the core/periphery concept in
general, it is a view that looks at issues
from a single perspective, that of the
metropolitan center. But, of course,
people living in what the metropolitan
center thinks of as the periphery see
their land and culture as a center,
until their brains are remolded to
think of themselves as marginal
citizens belonging to a nation with a
capital somewhere far away. Once that
happens, they’re at risk of devaluing
and losing their own cultural heritage.
Leadership positions will go to people
from the central areas, and there will be
interregional inequality and unequal
distribution of resources. This is one
of the endemic distortions within
modern states that empires didn’t
struggle with quite so much. And it
produces a strange distortion among
historians, too: The future of nations
is often driven by peoples from the
border areas, but they tend to receive
the least attention. The only successful
invasions of China in history came
from its peripheries, but you hear
relatively little about their origins;
it’s somehow explained as a cultural
victory by the people from the center.
So it’s a very intriguing, elusive notion.

How have China’s concerns
about its inner periphery
affected states in its outer
periphery?
This kind of policy, trying to seal
off the inner from the outer, can
become problematic. We can see that
by looking at China’s dealings with
RB

Nepal in the last five years. Before
2008, 3,000 Tibetans on average fled
each year from Tibet to Nepal, crossing
the Himalayas without permits on
their way to join the exiles in India.
But now the Chinese authorities
have poured large amounts of money
into the Nepalese military, required
the Nepalese to set up a paramilitary
border force, given training to that
force and insisted that Tibetans no
longer be allowed to flee. This works:
Only 200 Tibetan asylum seekers
made it across the border last year. The
leak has been plugged.
But this approach involved a shift
from benevolent neighborliness to
a more assertive mode. Since 2008,
plainclothes Chinese police have been
operating freely in the border areas
well within Nepal; I was shadowed
and questioned by four of them last
time I was there. At China’s request,
the Nepalese authorities have blocked
some 5,000 Tibetans from moving
to the United States despite having
been offered U.S. visas some six
years or more ago. And any event
or celebration by Tibetans in Nepal
hinting at support for the Dalai Lama
is now broken up by police, apparently
because of pressure from the Chinese
Embassy in Kathmandu.
So the policy of dealing with the
outer periphery on friendly terms can
change to interventionism if you come
to view it as necessary and natural
to reorganize the behavior of your
weaker neighbors — even one that is
helpful to you, like Nepal. This seems
logical to the more powerful player,
convinced as it is that émigrés want to
split or weaken it. Here we see a third
periphery policy emerge: The outer
neighbors that are seen as weak are
dealt with differently from those, like
India or Russia in this case, that are
known to be strong. So the periphery
is a kind of elastic concept in which

a stronger nation tends gradually
to extend its power and to probe its
neighbors for vulnerabilities. It can
then end up behaving like a hegemonic
force instead of a friendly neighbor,
and, as we’ve seen with many other
countries including in the West, that
can lead to major shifts and tensions.

So you think this geostrategic
insecurity between the inner
and outer peripheries is a trait
of hegemonic powers more
generally?
I think it’s a quality found with
most powers; the Crimea is only
the most recent of many examples. You
can think of it, as many people used to,
as being the incomplete transition of
old-style empires to new-style nationstates. A new-style nation-state thinks
it has a very clear border and that its
power stops there, but in reality it
still acts like an old-style empire with
borders that are only boundaries —
they’re zones of influence that extend
in varying degrees to wherever it
thinks its power needs to go, or where
its interests need to be protected or
asserted. So you get a disconnect
between what’s actually happening
and what a state is saying. It says it’s
going to operate according to borders
which are completely fixed, but in
practice it’s rather different. It may not
use a military lever, as the Russians
have; it will more likely use economic
levers, or sometimes what people call
soft power, or some other means to
extend influence in areas where it feels
threatened or to which it is attracted.
RB

This is something that Owen
Lattimore and other scholars wrote
about extensively in the 1930s and
1940s, when they were much more
attuned to looking at states and
political alignments in terms of
geography — geography not in the
sense of land formations, but in terms
[11]

APAC Journal | Spring 2014

of how people survive on those terrains,
and how communications, transport
systems, rivers, trains, economies and
so on operate. It was very clear to
these scholars of geographic history
that borders were porous zones that
were talked about as fixed lines, and
that power tends to seep out through
those zones to protect itself from
vulnerabilities or to claim more things
it needs. It was Lattimore who pointed
out that the Great Wall of China
functioned to keep subjects from
leaving as well as to stop outsiders
from coming in. He and his colleagues
saw this as a feature of all empires —
Roman, British, Byzantine — because
their options to sustain the use of force
diminish as their lines of logistical
support extend.
So this happens with many nationstates today. And China also has this
very striking problem, also common
to most countries, that the areas seen
as remote from its so-called center
are areas where its own majority
population has never lived, or not until
recently. So it has no cultural affinity
with those places, and its officials
may find it difficult even to know
how to produce crops in those places,
or to maintain roads or transport
routes across them. They might start
thinking of these areas as places that
have to be garrisoned, or repopulated,
or mined for their resources, leading
to problems of sustainability and
cycles of animosity. This is what has
happened in China and many states,
reproducing in these areas models of
organization familiar and convenient
to those living in the heartlands, but
alien and exploitative to the original
inhabitants.
Notions of federalism are often
attempts to get around that kind of
problem. The CCP proposed that
system in the 1930s, based on the
Soviet model, and even promised
[12]

independence for minorities, though
these were quietly dropped a decade
later. Many Chinese analysts argue
now that it was concessions to the
periphery that led to the collapse of
the Soviet Union. So they’re not keen
on any hint of a federal solution. But
the unreconstructed core/periphery
model leaves them, and any state, with
huge tensions which still have to be
worked out.

These tensions seem to be
increasing inside Tibet, but it
is not entirely clear how they
will unfold in the future. Do
you think commitment to the
Middle-Way policy, which seeks
genuine autonomy through
non-violence for greater Tibet,
is diminishing?
There’s an increasingly tense
struggle within the exile Tibetan
community about the Dalai Lama’s
“Middle Way” policy; the evidence
is unclear so far about whether there
is such a divide within Tibet as well.
Those who oppose his policy, even
the most passionate, avoid criticizing
him by name and instead attack the
exile government and its supporters.
The pro-independence group has a
potent story to draw on from the past,
is prominent on the Internet and in
the media and seems to be growing,
but we don’t know how many actually
support it. At the other extreme are
the more conservative figures among
the exile leaders, who can be aggressive
and manipulative, trying to insist on
absolute and unquestioning support
for the Dalai Lama. The majority of
exiles are largely silent, but everything
suggests they retain overwhelming
support for the Dalai Lama and his
proposal for historic compromise with
China, even though it is a bitter pill
for most to swallow. That is almost
certainly the case inside Tibet, too,
where almost every reported protest in
RB

the last 10 years has included pictures
of the Dalai Lama or slogans calling
for him to be allowed to return.
The government of the Dalai Lama
is inevitably weaker now that he has
resigned his position as its official
leader; it will take time and skill for
it to gain authority. Beijing has not
given any concessions in response to
the major compromises offered by the
Dalai Lama as part of the Middle Way
policy, so that has weakened both the
Dalai Lama and the exile government,
and strengthened the arguments of the
pro-independence activists. And the
Internet is a forum that does not tend
to favor middle-ground views; it gives
prominence to people with stronger
voices, to the politics of rhetoric rather
than pragmatism. So I would think
that the Middle-Way policy is under
serious stress. It’s hard to measure, but
I think it’s very likely.
Beijing’s strategy probably includes
encouraging just such a weakening of
support for the Dalai Lama as he ages,
and may be designed to fuel an increase
in division among Tibetans. That
does not mean that the conservatives
among Tibetans should be allowed to
stop criticism and debate, as they try
to do. Criticism is essential to effective
politics. But real leadership is needed on
both sides if debate is to be productive.
But many advanced democracies now
have shifted to zero-sum politics, what
we can call polemical democracy —
the demise of the loyal opposition in
democracies is a global crisis, not just
a Tibetan one.
This means that as the Dalai Lama
ages and withdraws increasingly
from exercising power or influence,
support for his very difficult policy
of compromise is likely to diminish.
And when he dies, it could collapse
cataclysmically overnight. A lot of
people are going to say that he made

Spring 2014 | APAC Journal

major compromises for 30 years, and
that most people reconciled themselves
to renouncing independence — in
effect, they gave up on their ideals —
but got little or nothing back from
China. I think many people would
predict chaos, or even major violence,
across Tibet. Of course there will be
others who will argue for acceptance of
the status quo, given the sheer power
differential. And China is gambling
that rising wealth within Tibet will
make the pragmatists the majority. But
even if that happens, there’s a risk of
a long legacy of acute and widespread
bitterness towards China if the Dalai
Lama dies outside his homeland.
Once he dies, there will be no national
figure among Tibetans for Beijing to
engage with. The Chinese leaders have
spent 60 years trying to find pliable
figures whom they can claim as the
leaders of Tibetans. That’s what a
Communist state always tries to do
in its less radical phases — identify a
local leader, equip him with a narrative,
define him as traditional, ideally
anoint him as a lama and get him to
say that he supports their rule. But it
hasn’t worked in Tibet, and instead
they have resorted to requiring people
in their hundreds of thousands to sign
documents or give statements attesting
to their loyalty. It’s a cruder version
of what Chomsky and others talked
about as manufacturing consent, and it
has often worked quite well in China
generally. But it’s very hard to pull that
off with members of a totally different
culture, unless you have a charismatic
leader on hand whose support is
independent of the credentials given
to him by the state. You can’t really
manufacture that sort of charismatic
status.
But anyway, things don’t stand still.
There will be new problems to confront
and new alliances will form. There’s the
risk of major violence in Tibet when

the Dalai Lama dies, but, ironically,
that could play out as a mid-term
advantage to China, because it
will fragment Tibetans, justify
militarization and placate international
criticism. Even if that doesn’t happen,
deep cleavages are likely to emerge
among Tibetans along regional and
sectarian lines.Economically, as massive
state investment creates an expanded
middle class among Tibetans, different
interest groups could emerge which
can’t afford to challenge Chinese rule;
if that happens, the exiles and the
activists could find themselves isolated,
something which could happen very
fast. That’s the gamble that Beijing
seems to be relying on.

Do you think that, short of
independence and given the
precarious status of Tibetan
exiles — especially where they
have no legal recognition —
Tibetans will always remain
on a periphery in one sense or
another?

At the same time, underlying
perceptions of Tibet seem to be
shifting in the media from that
of a remote zone of fantasy to
an international hotspot, at least in
terms of ecology. People now point
to the fact that it’s the source of
most of Asia’s water supplies
and key to global warming. But
there are also geostrategic factors:
it’s the interface between two major
powers, the highland of Asia, it
covers a quarter of China’s landmass
and, historically, Tibetans have
posed repeated obstacles to China’s
ability to integrate large parts of
its nation. Plus they’re largely united
by religion and easily mobilized,
presenting a constant risk of challenge
to Beijing. So, ironically, it now
looks as if the popular perception
of the importance of Tibet, albeit
expressed through exotic imagery,
turns out to have been at least as
useful as those of the professional
analysts. Ordinary wisdom was right,
in a way.

Many pundits like to argue
that the Tibet case has always
been treated as peripheral, whether
by China or the West, because of
fantasies about mysticism, remoteness,
strangeness and so on. But that is also
a fantasy, a detail of rhetoric: the more
likely reason is because it’s landlocked.
Politicians and strategists tend to treat
maritime states — states with naval
power — as the important forces in the
world. But actually, it’s places where
the only contact is through land that
we send our young men and women to
die on our behalf. Although they are
often seen as marginal to international
discussions, most of our wars take place
in landlocked or almost landlocked
countries — Afghanistan, Chechnya,
South Sudan, Rwanda, Palestine, Iraq
— or across land borders. So elite
assumptions about such places are not
always reliable.

Of course, it’s not currently in the
interest of China to speak publicly of
Tibet or Xinjiang like that. This is even
more the case with India, the giant
neighbor to the south, where Tibet is
also treated as peripheral, quaint and in
the past. Just like people, nation-states
develop rhetorical strategies, often
very odd ones, which give prominence
to what suits them rather than to the
realities on the ground. So the way
Tibet is thought of internationally
may not change abruptly. But I think
informed opinion will increasingly
regard Tibet as significant, as the
question mark hanging over China’s
rise, and over regional relations, too.
Perhaps we would do well to think
more about why Tibet and other
similar places have remained unsettled
for so long, and to reassess our
presumptions about peripherality and
its role in history.

RB

[13]

APAC Journal | Spring 2014
14

Perspective: China

Train to Protest:
Diaspora Conflict
in Flushing
By Ryan Allen
Teacher’s College

Photos: Ryan Allen

NEW York’s Chinatown is located

between Broome Street and Chambers
Street, next to Little Italy, in lower
Manhattan. The Chinese diaspora
has historically used the area as an
enclave for Sino-focused business
and social organization. After years of
gentrification in Manhattan, however,
old Chinatown has increasingly
become a tourist spectacle.

The Falun Gong have been
accused by the CCP of
attempting to subvert the
ruling party’s legitimacy,
and their religious practices
have thus been barred from
mainland China.

The new Chinatown of New York
City is arguably in Flushing, Queens,
as it boasts one of the densest
Chinese populations in the city and has
become the epicenter for mainlander
arrivals. To get there, take the 7 train
to the very last stop, Flushing-Main
Street, walk out from the underground,
and find yourself in a new New
York, immersed in bubble tea shops,
karaoke room ads and hawkers selling
bootleg Chinese TV shows — and all
of it in Mandarin tones or Chinese
characters.

A Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa) protest
group can usually be found displaying
claims of barbarism perpetrated
against their members by the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP), with vivid
signs and pamphlets depicting beating
marks or wounds. This group, whose
members use meditation and focus
as an expression of their religious
beliefs, has been accused by the CCP
of attempting to subvert the ruling
party’s legitimacy, and their religious
practices have thus been barred from
mainland China.

Along with the Chinese community’s
food, language and culture, there has
been an importation of the political
divides that plague the Chinese state
today. On any given day, the crowded
street corner around Flushing’s
subway exits are dotted with political
protestors.

Often juxtaposed next to the Falun
Gong devotees is the Chinese AntiCult World Alliance, a political group
that condemns and counter-protests
the Falun Gong movement, disparaging
the religion as a dubious cult. Hanging
behind these demonstrators are
large banners that read, “Drive out

[14]

the evil cult to usher in the Spring,”
and, “Keep away from the evil cult
Falun Gong,” in both English and
Mandarin.
Because of the close proximity of the
dueling groups, there is a noticeable
tension between their entourages, as
well as competition to get people’s
attention — one demonstrator
even bragged about how many
more pamphlets he gave out than
the Falun Gong group. With this
tension comes mistrust, and all of the
protestors interviewed on both sides
were noticeably apprehensive of any
questions, with a few declining to
comment despite loudly proselytizing
on a crowded street corner.
When asked why they were protesting,
the Falun Gong group claimed to be
highlighting crimes that the CCP
committed against members of their
movement (including purported organ
harvesting) or even against themselves
and their families. All of the Falun
Gong protesters came from various
parts of China, but were granted
political asylum in the United States
because of their persecution.
Looking back into China’s past can
offer insight into why the CCP

Spring 2014 | APAC Journal

The Falun Gong]
“ [destroy
the Chinese

image. China is not
like that. China and
Chinese have many
problems, but not
like the way that they
show.

leadership is suspicious of religious
and populist groups such as the Falun
Gong today. China’s last imperial
dynasty, the Qing dynasty, was nearly
toppled in the mid-nineteenth century
by a native Christian movement
known as the Taiping Revolution.
At the same time, movements that did
eventually lead to the toppling of the
Qing government were grassroots-led,
and the CCP’s own rise and takeover
shared a similar grassroots heritage. To
many in China, Falun Gong fits into
these historical narratives given its
far-reaching membership and religious
foundation.
As for the Chinese Anti-Cult World
Alliance members, their motives
for being on the street were a bit
murkier. Their organizer, Michael
Chu, who also runs the Flushing
Neighborhood Watch, stated that they
were demonstrating because Falun
Gong was a “bad representation” of the
Chinese people.

”

He then presented a paper describing
behavior considered unacceptable for
the Chinese, yet with no mention of
the Falun Gong: “No Spitting… No
Littering… Don’t Talk Loudly… Please
Stand in Line… Help Each Other…”

the group to disparage their religious
movement. There is no real way to
determine the truth, as the anti-Falun
Gong group rejects any notion of a
CCP connection.

“They destroy the Chinese image.
China is not like that. China and
Chinese have many problems, but not
like the way that they show,” said Chu,
motioning towards the rival protestors.

“We are a non-profit organization…
we have 1,500 volunteers… established
four years ago,” said Chu, denying
any connection to the CCP and
emphasizing his group’s community
watch component.

The Falun Gong members gave a
different reason for Chu and his
group’s opposition and involvement
in street protests. “Because they were...
bought off by the CCP to do this bad
thing,” said Ms. Wang, who requested
to not use her full name. “[The CCP]
poisons the normal people, also they
poison the Chinese people.”

The two groups mostly protest
peaceably and are not overly aggressive
when handing out materials, just
loud and in the way. Yet their close
proximity to one another sometimes
brings small clashes. On occasion,
the police have had to intervene in
squabbles over protesting turf and
regulations.

When asked why other Chinese
nationals were protesting their group,
all of the Falun Gong members
claimed that the CCP was paying

“You see, she should have a sound
permit,” said Chu, gesturing towards
a Falun Gong protestor holding a
radio that was broadcasting a message
[15]

APAC Journal | Spring 2014

The daily spectacle of
dueling protestors would
send earthquakes through
society back in China, or at
least through the CCP ranks,
but it only blends into the
typical chaos here.
in Mandarin. “It’s so noisy, she has the
right to express her opinion, okay. But,
she is making noise. I told her, I wish
an officer would come here or someone
call 911; it’s really a nuisance. When
the police come, I can complain.”
As for the local community’s
attitude toward these demonstrations,
Chu then proceeds to confront Ms. each group is adamant about its
Wang, and an argument ensues. The importance to the neighborhood.
other Falun Gong demonstrators Yet, most residents walk by quickly,
come to her assistance, and after a ignoring the chants critical of the
short shouting match, Chu laughingly CCP, muddled with shouts calling
backs off.
the Falun Gong a cult. No one here
seems to care much about the highDespite his passion, Chu could strung political battle each group is
never sensibly explain his disdain waging on American turf, much less
for the Falun Gong that he and his what it means back in China.
organization protest weekly. He
also exhibited strange behavior when The daily spectacle of clashing
approached initially, as he tried to protestors would send earthquakes
secretly take pictures of me and through society back in China, or
refused an interview until he realized at least through the CCP ranks, but
I was only writing an article and not it only blends into the typical chaos
associated with the Falun Gong group. here — the grocery hawkers, the
The Falun Gong protesters claimed karaoke ads, the protestors and the
that he sends the pictures to rest of the Chinese diaspora in
CCP officials.
Flushing, Queens.
[16]

TOP: A Falun Gong poster describes
the religious group’s founding by
Li Hongzhi in 1992. It explains that,
as he lectured across the country,
he eventualy gained 70 million
followers in China alone by 1998,
with a total of over 100 million
followers in over 100 countries
today. Li Hongzhi has been a
permanent resident of the United
States since 1998
BOTTOM: Michael Chu, leader
of the Flushing Neighborhood
Watch, confronts a Falung Gong
practitioner who claims the rival
protestors are acting on behalf
of the Chinese Communist Party
under the guise of concerned
local residents. Chu himself says
he is annoyed by the noise level of
demonstrators

Spring 2014 | APAC Journal
17

Policy Memo: Japan

Geography
is Destiny:
Japan’s New
Defense Posture
By Sonya Kuki

School of International & Public Affairs

MUCH ado has been made of Japan’s

recent efforts to shore up its defensive
capabilities. Indeed, Japan has made
tremendous strides in this area in the
last year alone, including the creation
of a national security council and a
noticeable increase in defense spending.
Why now? For more than a thousand
years, Japan’s unique geographic profile
has shaped the Japanese civilization
and its interactions with the world.
The same is true today. There are
four main geostrategic concerns —
demographics, natural resources, the
North Korean threat and the rise of
China — that demonstrate the need
for Japan’s stronger defensive posture,
and which will undoubtedly shape
its future interactions with the rest
of Asia.

Impor tance of Geography
The forces of globalization have
seemingly diminished the significance
of geographic borders, but this
conclusion would be misleading in
the case of Japan. In fact, geography
has never been more important than
it is today. Geography’s immovable
quality has always limited the ability of

states to alter and exploit their natural
environments. Thus, geography factors
prominently into the strategic calculus
of human beings, which forms the
conceptual basis of strategic geography.
Japan is a nation composed of four
main islands located off the east coast
of Asia with a population of around
127 million. Despite its total surface
area being larger than that of Germany,
Japan’s land yields very few natural
resources and is largely regarded
as inimical to human habitation
given its geographic characteristics.
Surrounded completely by water,
Japan has transformed itself over
the last century and a half into a
maritime, industrialized nation heavily
dependent on external resources
and the movement of large volumes
of international trade to sustain
its economic drive. Across the Sea
of Japan, Korea sits just 118 miles
away and China just 497 miles. Its
geographical separation from the
Eurasian landmass has fostered a
form of cultural remoteness, remnants
of which continue to define Japan’s
uniqueness and isolation.

Natural Resources & Trade

Japan is notoriously resource-poor.
It is not endowed with the resources
needed by industrial or post-industrial
states, lacking significant deposits
of coal, ores, oil and many of the
other basic raw materials required
for manufacturing. Thus, Japan’s
security interests are directly linked
with its ability to be self-sufficient,
and its reliance on imported goods
requires an active consideration of
the supply chain and the forces that
influence it. For example, in response
to the Japanese Coast Guard’s ( JCG)
detention of a Chinese fishing boat
captain who rammed a JCG vessel in
disputed waters just off Taiwan, China
cut off exports of rare earth elements

(REE) to Japan in the fall of 2010. For
Japan, REEs are a critical component
in the production of numerous defense
technologies including precisionguided munitions, electronic warfare
capabilities, electric drive motors
(components in the F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter), radar and sonar. As a result
of incidents like this one, Japan has
grown increasingly wary of China’s
monopoly on REEs and other strategic
resources.
Japan’s ongoing and anticipated
investments in critical infrastructure
throughout Asia are intended to
enhance the connectivity of the
entire region, thereby shaping and
diversifying logistical, supply-side
dynamics in a way conducive to Japan’s
economic interests. This creates new
vulnerabilities, however, as shipments
routed through the South China Sea
and other Southeast Asian waters are
susceptible to shipping stoppages and
diversions by China, which has shown
an increasingly aggressive posture
in these same waters. For Japan, this
necessitates securing the freedom of
the seas, as it cannot risk a disruption
in the flow of critical resources
without sustaining a damaging blow
to its national security. Protecting
commercial transit routes, as well as
deterring states that may interfere
with them, is one strategic rationale
for enhancing Japanese defensive
capabilities.

Changing Demographics
An accurate projection of future
Japanese
strategic
capabilities
cannot be divorced from a serious
consideration of Japan’s impending
demographic disaster: a rapidly
aging population in tandem with an
equally declining birthrate. Japanese
government projections estimate
that total population will fall from its
current 127.5 million to 116.6 million
[17]

APAC Journal | Spring 2014

in 2030, and to 97 million in 2050.
In the simplest terms, manpower is
necessary to maintain a sizable air
force and navy, the two most critical
branches of Japan’s defense forces
given the country’s geography and
security environment. This problem
is particularly acute given the
asymmetrical advantage a potential
adversary like China has in terms of
population. For Japan to compensate
for the projected manpower shortage,
it must develop more advanced naval
and air capabilities.

T h e N o r t h K o re a n T h re a t
Japan’s
geographical
proximity
to North Korea subjects it to the
unpredictable and unstable whims of a
totalitarian regime. In the last decade
alone, North Korea has engaged in a
series of provocations, mostly aimed
at South Korea but also against Japan.
As recently as March 2013, North
Korea warned Japan that it would face
a horrible strike for colluding with
the United States after the United
Nations imposed more sanctions
on the reclusive regime. In April of
2013, in response to Japan’s placement
of PAC-3 missile interceptor units
around Tokyo after North Korean
provocations that March, North Korea
reportedly warned Japan that it would
be its first target, in addition to major
U.S. military installations in Japan.
Due to the unpredictability shown by
the nuclear-capable regime in recent
decades, Japan cannot stand idly by in
the face of North Korean belligerence.
An enhanced defensive orientation
would be a significant deterrent that is
likely to influence the strategic calculus
of North Korea.

China Territorial Disputes
The rise of China is a menacing
prospect for Japan, and relations
have grown acutely adversarial due
[18]

to territorial disputes in the East
China Sea over the Diaoyu/Senkaku
Islands. Japan’s imperial conquests
in the early twentieth century led to
the colonization and subjugation of
parts of China, and this chapter of
oppression has woven anti-Japanese
sentiment into the fabric of Chinese
national identity.
In September 2012, Japan purchased
the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands from its
private Japanese owners, and shortly
thereafter, China began to challenge
Japanese administrative control by
announcing that it would initiate its
own patrols of the disputed islands.
To date, there have been over 70
aerial and maritime incursions by the
Chinese in the waters surrounding the
disputed islands, and each time risks
miscalculation and misinterpretation
that could easily escalate into
armed conflict.
The bigger picture shows a disturbing
trend: China’s pattern of aggression
and willingness to up the ante to test
Japan’s limits is a dangerous game of
brinkmanship. In November 2013,
China unilaterally expanded its air
defense identification zone (ADIZ)
to encompass the Diaoyu/Senkaku
Islands. Both Japan’s military and
commercial aircraft have refused to
acknowledge China’s new ADIZ
and comply with its accompanying
rules.
Given this backdrop, there is sufficient
urgency for Japan to reconsider force
capabilities in order to neutralize
both the threat of armed conflict and
the pressure put on its defenses by
China’s frequent maritime and aerial
incursions. That China has engaged
in a rapid military modernization
program fueled by its vast economic
resources
reflects
corresponding
advancements in its capabilities,
inciting great alarm for Japan, which

has constitutional restrictions and
financial constraints that limit its
ability to keep pace with the Chinese
military (its navy in particular). Over
the course of the last 10 years, China
has increased its military spending by
an astonishing 175 percent to become
the second largest military spender
after the United States, which saw an
increase of 32 percent over the same
period. Given this, Japan’s defense
preparedness over the vast expanse of
its southwestern territories has become
a priority for policymakers in Tokyo
— and rightfully so. Furthermore,
embracing a stronger defensive posture
is arguably encouraged by the United
States, and allowing Japan to fortify
its existing defenses will alleviate the
American share of the security alliance.

Stronger Defense Posture
The strongest case for a reorientation
of Japan’s defensive strategy and
capabilities lies with its strategic
geography. Japan’s demographics and
natural resources, in addition to its
relations with neighbors and potential
adversaries like China and North
Korea, all coalesce to form a sense of
urgency in Japan about the emerging
security environment it now faces. For
Japan, geography is destiny, and if it
wishes to influence this destiny, then it
must tailor its grand strategy to take
account of the geographic dimensions
and constraints to which it is subject.
This forms the foundational argument
for how, due to its geographic context,
Japan is justified in its current pursuit
of a more muscular defense posture.
After all, Japan has historically shown
a propensity for change, having
completely reinvented itself twice in
the last century and a half with the
Meiji Restoration starting in 1868 and
the post-war rebuilding in 1945. Japan
will therefore continue to do what it
has done so exceptionally well: adapt
and survive.

Spring 2014 | APAC Journal

Submission

19

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